Effectiveness of Online Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention on Health Anxiety, Anxiety Sensitivity, and Somatosensory Amplification of Healthy Individuals with High levels of COVID-19 Anxiety

Coronavirus 2019 is becoming pandemic and has caused varying levels of anxiety in the healthy population. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the online cognitive-behavioral intervention on health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and somatosensory amplification in healthy participants with high levels of COVID-19 anxiety. The present study was a semi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design with the control group. The statistical population of the study included all students of Guilan University with high levels of Covid-19 anxiety in the academic year 2020-2021, which were included in accordance to principles of diagnosis of health anxiety in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition. 60 participants were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to either experimental (n = 30) and Waiting for treatment (n = 30) groups. 8 sessions of cognitive-behavioral intervention were provided for the experimental group. Research instruments were Short Health Anxiety Inventory Salkovskis et al, Anxiety Sensitivity Taylor et al, and Somatosensory Amplification Scale Barsky et al. The results showed that cognitive-behavioral intervention led to a decrease in health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and somatosensory amplification in the experimental group (p<0.01). According to the findings of the study, cognitive-behavioral intervention with emphasis on reducing negative appraisal, catastrophic beliefs, and exaggeration can be an effective way to reduce COVID-19 anxiety in a healthy population.